Deeplinks Blog posts about Bloggers' Rights

Nearly four months after first announcing it would support pseudonyms, Google rolled out changes to the account creation process for Google+ yesterday. The changes will allow users the option of choosing a nickname/alternate name to display in his or her Google+ profile, or choosing a pseudonym which is not linked a real name.

Nicknames address the needs of users who want to display the alternate name they may be known by, or a maiden name, as well as foreign-language users who want to use an alternate name. Users who select a nickname should note, however, that Google plans to roll out nicknames to other services, so that funny college nickname you use on Google+ might appear on your professional Picasa account one day.

In Thailand, details of the most recent victim of lèse majesté laws emerged this week, adding to a long year of crackdowns on free speech in the country. Alongside the news coverage, Freedom Against Censorship Thailand (FACT) published new analyses demonstrating the magnitude of measures the Southeast Asian state has taken to block websites it deems politically offensive.

Last week, a federal district court judge in Oregon raised eyebrows when he rejected claims that a self-proclaimed Internet investigative journalist did not enjoy the protections of the state’s reporter’s shield law in a defamation lawsuit brought against her by Kevin Padrick, an Oregon attorney who was one of the targets of her online postings. Judge Marco A.

Two weeks ago, the New York Times published a letter to the editor from Christopher Wolf, who leads the Internet Task Force of the Anti-Defamation League, in which he suggested:

It is time to consider Facebook’s real-name policy as an Internet norm because online identification demonstrably leads to accountability and promotes civility.

People who are able to post anonymously (or pseudonymously) are far more likely to say awful things, sometimes with awful consequences, such as the suicides of cyberbullied young people. The abuse extends to hate-filled and inflammatory comments appended to the online versions of newspaper articles — comments that hijack legitimate discussions of current events and discourage people from participating.